Unit administration
From the middle years of the reign of Constantine VII it is apparent that the organization described for the preceding period was evolving fairly rapidly, and by the end of the reign of John I Tzimiskes (969—76) presented a rather different appearance to that of the armies of the preceding period. The changes affected modes of recruitment and equipping armies as well as organizational matters, but the former will be dealt with in the appropriate chapter below. The latter are signalled in the written sources by a shift in terminology. As we have already noted, the titles of various ranks and positions in the provincial armies had been from the seventh century a mixture of both Hellenized Latin words and Greek terms—thus both drouggarios and chiliarches occur for the same position, the former being the everyday term, the latter occurring—albeit infrequently—in literary contexts.29
By the 960s, many of these Latin technical terms were supplemented by a range of newer, and purely Greek, words. The rank of taxiarches first appears in a military treatise attributed to the emperor Nikephros II Phocas (963—9), an infantry commander in charge of a taxiarchia or unit of 1,000 men: these two terms are used in parallel with the terms chiliarchia and chiliarches, equivalent in turn in a thematic context to drouggos and drouggarios. At the same time the titles archegetes and hoplitarches appear for commanders of larger infantry divisions in field army contexts. Other new commands which appear include the stratopedarches (“field marshal”) of the west and of the east, and an officer called the ethnarches (ethnarch, “commander of foreigners”), these last two referring to commanders of both infantry and cavalry formations.
These new terms did not replace the older vocabulary entirely: on the contrary, they represent on the whole the desire to find terms suitable for describing larger standard units than were normally available from the thematic armies. The sources hint that the manpower available from the themata—that is, those registered in the muster-rolls for each regional army—was slowly decreasing, so that the government needed to find alternative ways to maintain the strength of its forces. Already in Leo’s Tactica the need to brigade together elements from several tourmai or even themata to create a reasonable offensive army is apparent, and the same tendency is clear also in another military treatise, “On skirmishing warfare”, written probably in the 960s. One result of the gradual decline in the size and numbers of thematic units was that, as the average size of the bandon shrank, so must that of the drouggos and tourma. One of the results was the appearance, beginning already in the later ninth century, of the amalgamation of the ranks and functions of the komites in charge of banda and the douggarioi in charge of drouggoi. The new title of drouggarokomes thus makes its appearance, suggesting that there was very little difference in size and tactical value between the older, large bandon of 200—400 men, and the reduced drouggos, which may have numbered only about the same. At the same time, the average tourma must also have been reduced in size, approximating in practice to the old drouggos of as many as 1,000 soldiers: there is some evidence to suggest that the tourmai in the thema of Thrakesion in the 940s, for example, numbered from 600 to 800 or slightly more, and since there appear to have been four tourmarchai, the total strength of the thematic army for that region would have been about 3,000, perhaps slightly more.30
Another result of the shortfall in thematic numbers seems to have been that the terminology of drouggoi and tourmai no longer accurately described these joint battlefield formations, so that new terms—for units of 500 and 1,000— became current. Already in the 950s one text notes that the “imperial” units in the Charsianon and Thrakesion regions (i. e. those units raised as professional, mercenary tagmata but based in the provinces) number from 320 to 400, while the usual cavalry bandon was a mere 50—150 strong. The word drouggos fades from use during this period, having had a tactical significance only, whereas tourma continues in use to describe both a territorial district of a theme and a body of soldiers from that area. But in practical terms words such as allagion (meaning a “rotation”, i. e. of duties), taxiarchia and parataxis occur with increasing frequency, eventually to the exclusion of the older terminology, during the later eleventh century. In contrast, the primary unit of both tactical and territorial administration, the bandon, survives through this period and into the late empire.31
It is important to emphasize that the increase in the employment and establishment of mercenary tagmata (on the model of the four imperial tagmata), during the tenth century reflects not just the demands of government expansion along the eastern front, but also the reduction in suitably registered manpower in the older themata. But as such recruitment of mercenary tagmata increased dramatically during the middle and later tenth century, so an ever greater proportion of the effective military strength of the state was represented by this source, and the officers who commanded such units, whether infantry or cavalry, received titles appropriate to the size of their unit. In the cavalry, in fact, very few new terms appear, except for the term parataxis to describe a cavalry unit of 10 banda of 50 men each, and below the level of the new larger taxiarchies of infantry, the traditional subdivisions into hundreds, fifties, tens and so on was maintained, with an appropriate level of junior or non-commissioned grades. The difference seems primarily to have lain in the fact that a commander of one hundred men—kentarchos or hekatontarches—actually commanded something like this number rather than a nominal century of far fewer men, as seems regularly to have been the case in the thematic forces up to and including the time of Leo VI.32
These arrangements seem to have continued in use as the basic framework of Byzantine infantry and cavaky units, whether indigenous or foreign (i. e fulltime, “mercenary” units) right through the eleventh century, through the militarily disastrous years of the period from 1071 until well into the reign of Alexios I and up to the time of the Fourth Crusade. The sources frequently mention the hierarchy of middling and junior officers who commanded the units and sections of units making up the imperial infantry and cavaky forces.33 Beyond that, and partly because such a large proportion of the imperial army consisted of foreign mercenaries under their own leaders, it is difficult to be precise, although the limited evidence suggests that many of the technical terms for ranks, even if their exact significance had changed, continued in use. The continued organization of infantry and cavaky into parataxeis and taxiarchiai is confirmed by the accounts of contemporary or near-contemporary historians such as Niketas Choniates, and this implies that the internal structures and grading of such formations likewise continued in use: certainly the junior ranks of pentekontarches and dekarchos continued in use, and since the twelfth-century historians refer on several occasions to the subordinate officers within the infantry and cavaky units, it is likely that the rest of the ranking system within indigenous Roman units remained much the same.34
Tactical structures
The changes which are known to have taken place in the middle years of the tenth century, as the empire went increasingly on to the offensive and as the need for a wider variety of different arms became apparent, had important consequences for the development of the army thereafter. Until that time, the heavy cavaky had (probably) been supplied by the imperial tagmata and other elite units based in and around the capital, although even here the evidence for these troops being substantially more heavily armed and better equipped than the regular contingents of the provincial theme armies is slim, to say the least.35 Most of the theme cavaky was light-armed or regular horse, and the infantry were chiefly employed to man strongpoints, garrison fortresses and defend settlements. The armies of the themata in the period from the 660s to the early tenth century had needed to respond rapidly to attack, to harass enemy raiders or make rapid raids into enemy territory. The increased importance of heavy infantry, and the introduction of a special heavy cavaky brigade (the latter during the middle years of the tenth century), all signal the change to a more aggressive form of warfare.36
The full-time units, or tagmata, both infantry and cavaky, became increasingly preponderant in the overall composition of Byzantine armies from the 950s for the reasons outlined above. The thematic militias correspondingly fell into the background, especially as the frontier advanced and they were needed less and less frequently, although soldiers were still raised in considerable numbers when necessary, brigaded in taxiarchies if infantry or parataxeis if cavaky, when the need arose, and they were probably also posted to frontier garrisons for periods of duty. Several “named” units appear in the later tenth and eleventh centuries: the Athanatoi (Immortals), established by John Tzimiskes and re-established by Alexios I; the tagma of the Stratelatai, first mentioned during the reign ofJohn I and again in 1069, after which it vanishes from the record; the unit of the Satrapai, which appears briefly in administrative sources for the 970s and then disappears; the Maniakalatoi, formed of Franks from Italy by the general George Maniakes, are recorded up to the 1070s; the unit of the Megathymoi, which appears in the 1040s, likewise only once; and the Archontopouloi, established by Alexios I but not mentioned thereafter. Alexios I recruited the defeated Pechenegs whom he settled in the district of Moglena (southeast Macedonia) into a tagma “of the Moglena Pechenegs”, while during the wars he fought in the 1080s a unit of “Manichaeans” also fought—recruited from among the Paulicians settled around Philippoupolis by John I—although they were later disbanded.37
As we have seen, the newly conquered territories were organized into smaller units than the older themata, given regular garrisons of professional cavalry and infantry, and placed under new military officials, the doukes. And until the middle of the eleventh century, there existed a substantial technical difference between the position of the various doukes in their commands— doukata—and the older strategoi in their themata. In the first place, this was because the former had much more important military resources at their disposal, and in the second, because they came to rank above the thematic commanders in the imperial hierarchy, an illustration of the importance of the military at this time.
As the older thematic armies fade into obsolescence during the eleventh century, so the system of commands based on ducates expands. Under officers commanding substantial forces of full-time professional troops, both infantry and cavaky, and organized in the taxiarchies and parataxeis discussed above, this system replaces almost completely the themata as the standard tactical and strategic framework for the organization of both defensive and offensive operations. And even though the emperors of the Komnenos dynasty, especially John II, attempted to re-establish a provincialized system of military recruitment based to an extent on land, like the older system of the tenth century and before, it was essentially an imperial army organized in local commands with full-time mercenary units at their disposal which characterized the imperial forces throughout the twelfth century.38
Whereas the armies of the period from the seventh to the tenth centuries had been provincially based and primarily defensive in focus, those of the later tenth and eleventh centuries were organized for offensive operations, consisted of full-time mercenary forces and were concentrated in the ducates making up the deep frontier zone along the northern and particularly the eastern frontiers. The centralized command structure—the domestikoi of east and west; their associated high-ranking officers of both regions, the stratopedarchai; the ethnarches commanding larger divisions of non-Byzantine mercenaries; the commanders of the infantry divisions of the imperial field armies entitled hoplitarchai or archegetai—is in stark contrast to the dispersed command structure of the preceding period. As the eleventh century progressed, these titles were often qualified by a variety of epithets intended to signify their position in the overall hierarchy. Thus the domestikos of east or west was often ranked as the megas domestikos (grand domestic), for example, just as the commander of the imperial fleet, the drouggarios tou ploimou, becomes the megas drouggarios (the grand drouggarios, or high admiral), and eventually gives way to the megas doux, the grand duke, and so on.
In addition, other positions attached to the court or palace service rise in importance in the military context, so that the protostrator, from the middle of the eighth century head of the imperial esquires or mounted attendants of the emperor, rises by the later eleventh century to become second-in-command of the imperial armies after the grand domestic. The older chartoularios tou stavlou in charge of the imperial and provincial stud-farms, now known as the megas chartoularios or grand chartulary, had a series of districts or stations under his control in the south Balkans called chartoularata, and was responsible, as before, for the provision of the imperial baggage train as well as for pack-animals for the army.39
The major strategic division of the armies into eastern and western sections also survived until at least the 1180s.40 With a few similar, incremental changes, and leaving to one side for the moment the question of the sources of recruitment and methods of remuneration, it was this tactical and administrative structure which remained in force, with modifications forced by the variable strategic and fiscal fortunes of the empire across the period, until the partition of the empire after 1204.
As in the period from the 1050s onward, so the sources for the Comnene period speak of a wide range of nationalities serving in the imperial forces under Alexios I, John II, Manuel and their immediate successors, and mention also the extensive recruiting campaigns to supply the forces for specific undertakings. Allied soldiers, and those supplied by treaty arrangement— Georgians, Alans, Cumans, Pechenegs, Serbs, Turks and Hungarians (from which nations mercenary soldiers were also hired)—fought alongside north Italian or Lombard, German and Norman mercenaries. For the most part, these troops fought under their own leaders, obeying the Roman divisional commander in whose section they were placed.41 The native Byzantine forces were also identified chiefly by their province of origin: Macedonians, Paphlagonians, Armenians and so forth were brigaded in the “eastern” and “western” divisions, as we have seen, and continued to be organized by taxiarchies, at least as far as concerns the infantry. During the rebellion of Isaac Komnenos in 1057, the sources refer to the tagmata or regiments of various themes, including Koloneia, Chaldia, Charsianon, Anatolikon (specified as of Pisidia and Lykaonia), Armeniakon, Macedonia, as well as of Franks and Rus’.42 Whether these are mixed units of infantry and cavalry, or of only cavalry (in the case of the Franks) or only infantry (as in the case of the Rus’), is rarely clear. In many cases, it is likely that they represent full-time or mercenary equivalents of the older thematic tourmai, since in one or two cases the eleventh-century sources suggest their equivalence. The palatine units continued to be recruited for the most part from foreigners. The Hetaireia survived, under its commander the megas hetaireiarches, as did the Vestiaritai, associated with the imperial treasuries, and the (after the 1060s mostly English) Varangians. The Vardariotai, who first appear in the later tenth century, associated with the region around Thessaloniki and the river Vardar, also continue to exist. Other groups, such as the Hikanatoi and Exkoubitoi disappear by c. 1100, replaced mostly by foreign mercenary units. By the time of the emperor Manuel I, still commanded by a primmikerios, but no longer recruited originally from Turks or Hungarians, they served as a purely palatine regiment.43
World History
